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In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
The problem is that none of it is true. Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed. Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published “Love and Consequences,” is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Seltzer’s book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Oregon, where she currently lives. In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.
Cripes, how do people think they can get away with this?
Sometimes when a story is labeled as non-fiction, that excuses the poor writing style. Readers don’t expect as much from those who walked the walk than they do from professional writers.
they need a bunch of “fiction” stickers to slap on those books.
problem solved
now there is the situation about using the “bloods” gang trademark without paying the appropriate licensing fee AKA “TAX”
Of course they can get away with this. There was that guy on Oprah who wrote a million little pieces. One writer for the Post won a Pulitzer this. Rigobertu Minchu won a Nobel Prize doing the same autobiography thing, and she is still honored even after her work was found to be fiction.
And why would people believe what they read is true?
I don’t care if it is true… I just want to know if it is a good read.
#5 That’s about what I’d expect from a liberal. Hell, Bill Clinton’s entire policy stance was based on just that thought.
She probably fakes orgasm too.
#6 – Being liberal has nothing to do with it. And quit pretending that Bill Clinton was a liberal.
I’m already conditioned to believe that this genre is fabricated… but if it’s a good story and well written (which I’m betting it isn’t, but I’d have to read it to know) then it still has value.
What’s the real story? Was it her intent pass a work of fiction off as a real memoir? Or, was it the publishers idea inflate book sales of a second rate novel from an unknown author?
Clinton was not a liberal, Ghengis Khan and Satan were liberals. Of course it all depends on what the meaning of is is.
Oprah is gonna have a shit fit
Just goes to show you that you should never put too much “faith” in a “book”. Maybe if she had attributed the chapters to different authors no one would care. If you bought it, read it and liked it, WTF. If you didn’t, too bad, you should’ve used the library!
So she wants to be a gang banging druggie slut like all rich white hoes from the suburbs, what else is new?
At least she’s pretty..
Meanwhile another female writer makes up a bunch of crap about kids with magical wands, flying broomsticks and haunted castles and she’s a multimillionaire.